Left
by Cushion
Summary: It doesn't matter anymore. Now they know how much it hurts. Don't you see? They deserve it all." A serial killer confess his murders to the team. This time, the case hits a little closer to home for all of them.


Author: Cushion

My first ever story! Do be nice to the newbie please.

With reference to episodes from season 1 and 2. This was set some time after season 3.

Enjoy!

Warning: A tad morbid.

Disclaimer: Nope, I do not own Criminal Minds or any of the characters.

Summary: " It doesn't matter anymore. Now they know how much it hurts. Don't you see? They deserve it all." A serial killer confess about his murders to the team. This time, the case hits a little closer to home for all of them.

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You think you know me.

You think you've got me profiled, the way you and the rest of the team have with every other unsub. You think that you've got every information on the way I behave, my past, my gender, age, race, character, occupation, what I eat for breakfast and probably what color socks I'm wearing all jotted down accurately in that file over there.

After all, I should know best how you guys work.

I'm actually rather surprised it took you so long to find me. I was almost confident that the police would come barging into my apartment when the first body was found.

The first guy - _my first victim_ - was a complete accident. I never meant to hurt anyone. I did not mean to kill Bryan Randle.

Matilda Matthews is a lovely women who I used to talk to sometimes when I visit the hospital. It was usually a one sided conversation - Matilda is the kind of person that would go on and on to anyone that bothers to be listening.

She told me that her favorite color is green. She told me that she used to work as a librarian, and was quite a looker during her younger days. She told me the joy and pride that she felt during the years in which she would introduce herself to others as Matilda _Randle_. She said that sometimes she remembers the day of her marriage and she can hear her ex-husband's voice in her head, speaking to her the vows - _" Till death do us part."_

She told me what it was like, _the hurt, pain and the guilt_ that she felt when he left. Her husband - Bryan Randle - walked out of their relationship for his busty blond-haired secretary 2 years after they got married.

Maybe it was destiny. That fateful night, after I received the call from the hospital about the death, it was one of those rare times when I went down by myself to the bar near my apartment.

It was crowded and noisy. I could not even manage to hear myself think there, but yet I overheard the shady, bearded man's failed attempt to flirt with the young lady behind the bar. The guy had a gun tucked at the waistband of his jeans, and smiled in a way of which he most probably thinks looks charming, but turned out looking perverted and repulsive.

I recognize that outlandish red hair and wicked dark green eyes from Matilda's stories. I saw the scare beneath his right eye, in which he got from a glass bottle thrown by her on the night he came home with the divorced papers. I knew who he was even before he introduced himself as Bryan Randle to the bartender. That was when I started hearing voices that were not mine inside my head.

I watched as he drank down 7 glasses of alcohol. The voices told me to follow him as he fell out of his stool at 2 in the night, and I did.

I followed him as he stagger out of the bar drunkenly. I watch him as he bumble on the street and stumble into a empty, dark alley.

That was where I cornered him and started stabbing him with a knife I did not know I was carrying in my back pocket. I don't remember much of that day. All I recall was the anger, and the voices in my head, telling me to keep stabbing, and I did.

I stabbed him once for Matilda. I stabbed him once more for all the hurt he caused for those he abandoned. I stabbed him another time for all the promises he broke – all those_ lies_. I stabbed him again and again and again, until my hands were dyed in his blood. I stabbed him until all his sins were atone. I had chasten all his wrong doings.

Than I shot him with his own gun in between the eyes, and threw his body inside the basement of an abandoned shack 24 miles away.

They should know what it feels like, to be lock up in shadows for hours. They deserve to feel every bit of the fear that I have.

The irrational fear of darkness, known as nyctophobia or scotophobia, is suffered by both adults and children, although patients who have reached adulthood are rare. Nyctophobic patients assume a quicker response to darkness than do most people. For most adult patients, the fear has been with them since childhood. Did you know that adults who developed the phobia in childhood may suffer from any retrospective reference or mental-recall of past events in the dark?

It happened many years ago, when I came back from school one day, after a merciless day of torments and abuses from my_ older_ and_ dumber_ classmates. My mother grabbed me just after I stepped into the house and threw me into the basement before I could comprehend what happened.

I love my mom. She just makes mistakes sometimes. My dad left when I was ten and she was the only one there for me. But it wasn't easy for a child to take care of anyone, much less a mentally unstable person.

I really hate my dad.

Her brown eyes was opened just a little wider than normal, dancing in a way that was not unfamiliar to me. She claimed that she was protecting me, hiding me from the _voices_. It was always the _voices_. I didn't understand her _then,_ but I knew that logic was not one of her strong points when the _voices_ are talking to her. My resistance was futile as she dragged me into the dark underground. The terrifying click of the lock seem to have amplified and was the loudest sound I've ever heard.

The basement was pitch dark. I couldn't see anything, not even my hands in front of me. I was terrified.

My mother never forgave herself after she found me in the basement 14 hours and 48 minutes later. She was horrified at what she had done, and she never trust herself to touch me ever again after that.

You see, it is all my dad's fault. It is his fault that I fear the darkness. It is his fault that she's _dead_. If he didn't leave, none of this would have happened.

Majority of serial killers tend to come from unstable families. As children, they are typically abandoned by their fathers or raised by domineering mothers. Their families also have criminal, psychiatric or alcoholic histories.

I guess it is a good thing he did not turn up for the funeral. I would have killed him too.

Hey, remember the first guy I ever shot? The psychotic long distance serial killer who works in the hospital? When I had nailed the shot in between Phillip Dowd's eyes, I realized that shooting and taking one's ability to breath was no big deal. The emptiness that I felt as I watch Dwod's body fall over, his eyes wide open with shock and that small crimson round wound on his forehead. It was tasteless, and I admit, disappointing.

I did not feel anything. No guilt or remorse for my actions. Just a kind of emptiness. I guess that was the first clue that marks me a psychopath as well.

Did you know that it is estimated that approximately one percent of the general population are psychopaths? That makes it about less than 0.2% of these insane people living in the United States alone.

But the pleased, warm satisfaction that I felt when you gave me your gun, the way Gideon – the man that was more of a father to me than anyone else, told me that he was _proud_ of me, made the kill felt so _good_.

Every shot that I fired into their head reminded me of that feeling. It makes me feel in control, wanted, _loved_.

Then Gideon left.

Why did he had to leave? What did I do wrong? I tried my best to helped the team in profiling the unsubs and catching them. I even got rid of my addiction to dilaudid.

Withdrawal symptoms of Dilaudid includes insomnia, sweating, nausea, vomiting, restlessness, body aches and severe depression. Abusers can expect a withdrawal syndrome as intense as that of morphine but much more severe in that it is compressed into a spike which will peak in 14 to 21 hours and resolve in 36 to 72 hours, provided they were not taking other longer-acting opioid, or have abnormalities in drug metabolism or liver or kidney function.

He left when things were the hardest, like dad. Dad left when mom was going through the worst of her sickness, and Gideon left when I was going through withdrawal from the damn drugs Tobias shot me.

I was upset and angry. It felt like someone had stabbed me twelve times in the chest.

They come, and pretend that they're someone you can count on, that they'll be there with you forever. But, just when you need them the most, they'll walk out unexpectedly and leave you blindsided. Why would they do that? Don't they know that it'll hurt me? It's not fair.

It doesn't matter anymore. Now they know how much it hurts.

Don't you see? They deserve it all.

Matilda Matthews stays in the room next to my mother's in the asylum. Sometimes, when she forgets to take her pills, she talks to thin air and imagine herself to be preparing a great dinner for her husband who's at work and would be back home soon. The last time I saw her was the day I went back to Vegas to the hospital to collect my mom's belongings. Divorcee, suffers from schizophrenia and a patient of the exact same mental institution. The similarities were so striking I was surprise you did not immediately linked me to the murder. Instead, you took me off the case and made me take a leave for a whole month, worried that I would be emotionally affected by the case, especially after my recent loss.

You think you know me. You think you know me from all the times we spend together, as a team – as a family. You spend even more time with us than with your actual wife and son at home.

Yes, I killed Bryan Randle on the day I learn the news of my mother's death.

I killed him and four other people in a month, because they walked away and hurt the people who loved them,_ needed them_.

Just like the way my father - both of them - left me.

---

Yup. The end. Spencer Reid is the killer and he's talking to Hotch. It's obvious (I hope).

Reviews would be much appreciated.

By the way, should I do another shot on another one of the team member's (probably Hotch) POV?


End file.
